Last year my sons and I visited London,PWP(Broxbourne),Colchester,Woburn & the Isle of Wight Zoo.We live in Herts and are open to suggestions as to where to visit this year say within a 90 mile drive .Obviously the longer the drive the fuller the day at the zoo please.
The obvious suggestion (unless you've excluded it for a reason) would be Whipsnade - a big zoo that will easily fill a day and should be closer to you than Woburn.
Hamerton Zoo is also worth a visit - looking on Google Maps it is an hour and eight minutes from Ware.
We did go there a couple of years ago so its certainly a possibility - have you bean lately any changes ?
They have rather a lot of very unusual species, considering they are a relatively small and out-of-the-way collection, including oncilla, tayra, corsac fox, two subspecies of aardwolf, canadian lynx and collared lemur. In the case of one or two of the taxa I mentioned, they are the only ones in the UK or even in Europe.
There is a new butterfly (and dwarf croc) house opening this year, and there have been several new species (mostly antelope, of which two species are unique in the UK) recently. The giraffe house has been done up. And it's one of the nicest of all UK zoos to just potter around.
You have Shepreth just up the A10, and Linton near Cambridge, which are both small but worth a trip and within an hour from you. Other places like Howletts, Wingham, Cotswolds, Twycross could take up to 2 hours driving for you, but I think they are worth the drive. You could look through THIS THREAD for opinions on such places
I went to Wingham in October for the first time & would definitely recommend it, but it's not really a full day, I went to the RSCC afterwards, which is only 10 minutes away. Other zoos worth considering within your range would be Howletts, Port Lympne and Cotswold Wildlife Park. I go to Hamerton fairly regularly so have to agree with that suggestion. I think it depends what your interests are, but personally I don't think there's a better zoo than Whipsnade within about 3 hours of you!
Hi Garyjp, I live 10 mins down the road from you and so here is a list of places that are within easy reach (1 hour and half away) Paradise wildlife park Shepreth zoo Linton zoo Woburn Safari park Whipsnade zoo Hammerton zoo Waddesdon manor aviary London zoo Brent lodge nature centre Battersea park children's zoo Barnes WWT Eagle heights Tropical wings Colchester zoo Howletts + Port lymphe Wingham wildlife park Wildwoods RSSC British nature center Beale park Living rainforest That is a list off of the top of my head but we are lucky to live in a very accessible area to zoos plus if you only have half an hour and want an animal fix then van hages is just around the corner !
Banham is out of the range specified (actually having looked again, it isn't), but well worth a visit. I wish it was closer to me, or at least the roadworks were finished as they add quite a bit to journey times.
Are corsac fox unusual? I know a few people who keep them as pets and they seem readily available, is it a choice by zoos to exclude them? Or is there some other issue?
Until relatively recently corsac foxes were rare in the UK even amongst private keepers, in the last 5 years people started breeding them very well and they were also imported from the continent where private breeders were also doing well with them. Am I right in thinking Hamerton was one of the first zoos in the UK to have corsac fox?
Not only that, they were the first zoo in Europe known to have successfully bred the species - and have done so once or twice a year since doing so in the late 1990's. As such, quite a lot of the stock found in zoos (and probably private hands) is related or descended from Hamerton stock.
